Tuesday, Jan 8, 2019, 11:05 am

From Academic to Assembly Line Worker: My Life of Precarity in Middle America

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Crisp conveyor (Getty images)

What does failure smell like? To me, it reeks of rotten potatoes.

After 20 years of trying, unsuccessfully, to piece together a living from adjunct teaching and freelance writing, last summer I took a job at Saratoga Potato Chips LLC, boxing chips at their Indiana factory.

My first morning on the job, I knocked over an entire pallet of boxes stacked nine feet high. Later, on the multipack assembly line, I scrambled to keep up like a panicky Lucy Ricardo at the candy factory.

Finally, I was sentenced to chip inspection. I was led to the line with no instruction, so I made up my own rules. I decided that if I wouldn’t want to eat the chip myself, it would go into the trash.

The chip inspection room, with its three fryers, was probably close to 100 degrees. But even in the heat, we were not allowed water at our stations. Occasionally there would be a five-gallon Igloo cooler with blessedly cold water. But the cooler was rarely refilled. As I gazed at it longingly, it seemed to mock me with false promises.

Located in the Rust Belt city of Fort Wayne, the factory seemed like another country. Managers and fellow employees assumed that Spanish was my first language because of my skin and hair. The Puerto Rican half of me was showing, giving me a chance to practice my limited Spanish.

None of this was supposed to happen. Growing up in Indiana, I had always heard, “If you want a decent job, you’ll have to go to college.”

My mother, who had dropped out of school, had suggested I become a teacher. But terrible experiences in middle school and high school made me never want to go back, not even as an authority figure.

I had an alternate plan: I’d go to beauty school, graduate, do hair, save my money, go to college, major in business and start my own salon. But in beauty school, I discovered I was allergic to permanent wave solution. The director of the school said that even the fumes might cause me to break out. So I quit. I think if I had to do it all over again, I’d just put some gloves on and stick it out.

I eventually did go to college, majoring in English. When I graduated in 1992, I started a career in journalism, working at a small-town newspaper in Huntington, Indiana. I wrote two feature stories a week, took photographs and informed readers of births and weddings. After three years, I figured I was ready for the big time and applied to one of the two papers in Fort Wayne. But I wasn’t hired, and I didn’t have the money to move away in search of other work. My writing career stagnated, consisting for years of freelance writing and part-time work for the local weekly entertainment journal.

In 2006, I got part-time work at the local community college, first doing note-taking, then teaching as an adjunct instructor. I’ve taught there off and on ever since.

My column at the Fort Wayne Reader, “Buenos Diaz,” has made me a Grade Z local celebrity. People seem to enjoy reading it, so that’s a kind of success. But it’s looking right now like the Reader might fold, which would mean the loss of another local paper and another source of income for me.

In 2014, I went back to graduate school for a master’s degree in writing studies. But after graduating in May 2017, I was still unable to find a full-time teaching position.

After attempting to scrape by on adjunct teaching and retail jobs, I finally returned to the world of temp agencies. Last June, I was in-between teaching gigs, and I needed to find more work fast.

This is a common predicament. Reeling from state budget cuts and propping up top-heavy administrations, universities have turned increasingly to the cheap teaching labor provided by non-tenure track faculty. More than half of college faculty today are adjuncts, but the jobs are notoriously precarious and low-paying—a 2014 survey eventually found that the median income is just $22,000 a year.

The trend towards low-wage, insecure jobs has been proceeding in blue-collar and service industries for decades. Many are surprised to see it now afflicting the bearers of advanced degrees; adjuncts have been called the “fast-food workers of the academic world.” But I’d point out that in order to make ends meet, some adjuncts may actually find themselves pulling shifts as actual fast-food workers—or fried-food inspectors, in my case.

Sorting through chips for $9 an hour, I made just a dollar more per hour than when I started at my first newspaper job more than 20 years ago.

There was also considerable loneliness in my new world of potato chips. My station isolated me from everyone else. If I was desperate for water or to use the bathroom, I had to wait until the fryer operator was in sight and wave him down.

“Necessito agua” or “Voy ir al baño, I would say with a smile.

For about three of the weeks I was working in the factory, my car was out of commission. It needed $700 in repairs, money I had to save up while I worked. That meant I had to spend another $300 on Uber rides just to get to and from work. I felt too bad asking my friends to shuttle me there at 6 a.m. It just added to my feelings of failure.

Each day after work, I considered drinking or doing drugs to escape it all, but I didn’t. All I could think about was going home and taking a shower, grabbing some chocolate and a glass of ice water, and laying on my bed with a portable fan running full blast at me while I watched YouTube.

In mid-July, I got a small reprieve. I had a successful interview at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, my alma mater. As an adjunct professor, I make about $800 a month teaching at the university and another $400 at the community college—hardly enough to get by, but more than I made inspecting snack food. I quit the factory in August.

This wasn’t the life I had envisioned for myself: part blue-collar worker, part professional, unable to fit in fully in either realm. I wonder if a piecemeal living of part-time work, no benefits and looming student loans is as good as it will get. Sometimes I feel fraudulent. My master’s degree sits on a bookshelf with clutter on top. I am proud and ashamed at the same time.

Now that I’m back in the classroom, I’m honest with my students—perhaps too honest. I tell students that I have to teach classes at other schools, I tell them about the factory jobs I’ve had, how I drive for Uber and Lyft, and how I often work seven days a week but still barely scrape by.

I still believe in the value of education as its own end. I get great satisfaction from helping students get through an assignment that they thought they couldn’t tackle. But anyone still selling an advanced degree as the path to prosperity should seriously rethink this view—maybe while spending the summer inspecting potato chips.

(Editor’s note: In response to queries from In These Times about working conditions described in this piece, Saratoga Chip Company CEO Peter Margie said that drinking water is not allowed near the chips “in accordance with good manufacturing practices and food safety requirements.” He also said that the company “has had previous unscrupulous employees that stole chips on a large scale” and that company policy permits staff to take home two bags of chips per week.)

Gloria Diaz has written professionally since the early 1990s. Her work has appeared in Bust online. She has self-published three books of short fiction. Served Cold: Tales of Revenge and Redemption is available on Lulu.com. Anything for Georgetown and Other Stories, and Tickle Your Fancy are collections of erotic fiction published under the pen name of Janell Elizabeth Meyer, and are also available on Lulu.com. Previously, she freelanced for WhatzUp and wrote a humor/general interest column, “Buenos Diaz”, for the Fort Wayne Reader. She is working on her second novel, combining humor with erotic fiction, which she describes as Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Fifty Shades of Grey. She is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she still lives.

More by Gloria Diaz

If your taxes went up on your pension, you either have a poor accountant or live in a high tax state. I'm getting an extra $200 per month. There is a world outside of New York and New Jersey.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 18:25:20

And you are soooo uninformed about the world around you.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 18:23:33

Stay classy.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 11:17:25

ITT, why do you allow trolls free rein?

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 11:15:39

Keep reaching for that rainbow.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 10:59:57

When people of your sycophantic ilk call me a loser, I know I have done something VERY right

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:54:19

You are SO fatuous.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:47:03

My taxes went up. On my small pension.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:46:32

I'm saying you are a very high quality (and by that I mean crapitalist shoddy) projector. Actually, your real talent is sociopathic sycophancy.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:42:51

So what you are saying is that your family is still full of losers after 40,000 years?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 10:38:51

You over there, fuck off. Wherever you land, fuck off from there. Keep fucking off until you're back where you started, then fuck off some more. Rinse and repeat.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:32:01

Half of my family immigrated from Asia 40,000 years ago. Is your name really Smith? You're sounding a lot like a Bell or a Howell, Hector the Projector.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:30:22

Yeah, this Rabbi Yeshua dude used to do that a lot.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:28:31

You know my point. Jobs, Wozniak, and Bezos are great mates for Capone.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-14 10:27:42

Yeah and lots of people died in those awful factories and farms in Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the USA for those American companies who did not care about their lives and if those people tried to change the political, social, and economic landscape that affect American business interests, they got ruthlessly crush.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-14 08:46:55

Capone was no bum and even the most ruthless business person did not want to mess with him. .

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-14 08:23:43

Nope, you are the one who is misguided and at worst, you believe that corporations and wealthy people are productive people when in reality they are the lazy ones.

Wrong, society runs on people working together so everyone has a decent life. A society can't run on people doing their own things at the expense of the rest of society.

In a unregulated capitalist/oligarchy society that you fully support, the poor and middle had lead far more miserable lives because the wealthy people have no reason to help their fellow citizens and/or try to improve their lot. That is a fact when you look at American labor history.

"Ff you think things are bad now, wait until you only have one name to vote for on a ballot and the company you work for, your union, and your government are all the same person and that person controls whether you live or die."

We are already there or have been there for the last 38 years. And that situation exists before in America until the Great Depression of 1929. The corporations and wealthy people in that time pre-1929 Depression era were running the government and the rest of society. You never heard of company towns? They were not paradises for the working people. The people in Central and South America have experience in dealing with American companies who dominated their countries.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-14 08:22:49

As far as I can tell, at best you are misguided, at worst, you are a lazy person who believes someone else owes him a living.

Society runs on people pursuing their own best interests and making decisions on what is best for them their families, and the place where they live.

In the Communist paradise that you are proposing, within 3 generations the people running these societies are the very same people who ran the capitalist societies that they replaced. The only difference is the poor and middle classes lead far more miserable lives than in capitalist societies because there is no reason to help your fellow man or try and improve your lot.

If you think things are bad now, wait until you only have one name to vote for on a ballot and the company you work for, your union, and your government are all the same person and that person controls whether you live or die.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 05:05:00

So did Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Jeff Bezos. Your point?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 04:45:57

You must be one of those who thinks that you will be a high living "government leader" after the communist revolution.

I've got news for you, a lot of people who thought like you died in the gulags in Russia and the collective farms in China and Cambodia.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 04:44:15

So you associate with only bums? I guess that's one way to feel superior.......

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 04:41:50

My parents were both immigrants who saved and invested well. There was never a year that my dad made more than a lower middle class wage. They lived a very comfortable life and put 3 of us through college and died with a net worth of about $1.5 million.

Are you saying that these people were thieves? Boy, you must be a lazy and envious lout.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 04:41:00

Enjoy your life. I'm OK with that as long as you don't expect me to support your lifestyle.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-14 04:36:23

Al Capone definitely started out with nothing.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:35:37

Your nose is so far up the collective ass of the bourgeoisie you will never get it out.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:13:36

More than I want to.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:11:52

Just not larcenous.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:11:34

Envy none. What one has to do to be a millionaire is not in my behavioral repertoire and never will be.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:10:49

Sorry, bullshit.

Posted by Jay Hansen on 2019-01-13 21:07:30

We had affordable/free education to the GIs who had return from the Second World War II and it gave us the largest middle class in history and there was no complains about the costs of running it. . We also had free/affordable education so the banks didn't have to worry about taking risks (unless the public bail them out) until Ronald Reagan started the precedence of getting rid of free/affordable education when he was governor of California and later as president of the USA Furthermore, studies have shown that for every dollar you invest in free/affordable education, you get seven dollars back. Sorry, but ever since Nixon remove price controls, businesses keep raising the prices of everything including books with no legal justification for it. Nowadays, you need a lot more colleges and universities because the American population is now at 330 million compare to when it was under 200 million back in 1965.

Society runs on people having different degrees; otherwise, where would we get our great writers, poets, singers, actors, actresses, historians, sociologists, etc. if we eliminate all those liberal, acting, writing, social, humanities and other classes? BTW, we don't see to care about encouraging kids to go into the STEM classes because then American companies would have to hire them instead of relying on foreign laborers. You can't complain about folks being non-productive if you tell them to stay in school but will not hire them when they graduate from school and pay them the wages that they deserve for all their toil and sweat they spent getting those degrees. You don't see Europe getting rid of their non-STEM classes and they take great pride in their cultures and maintaining them.

We spend more money on jails, and private and public prisons instead of building more colleges and universities and have one of the highest prison population in the world. We are subsidizing non productive citizens (aka private prisons) instead of investing in our potential productive citizens (the kids and the prisoners).

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 20:37:04

America is having problems because its citizens don't have money to have a decent life because the wealthy and the corporations have been taking all the money for the last 38 years and getting free stuff at the expense of the rest of society.

If America had not invade Iraq nearly 20 years ago, Europe would not be facing a refugee crisis. Of course, we have our drug crisis, immigration crisis, and immigration crisis if we had not treated Central and South America like it was a colony.

The Canadian system is far better than our and we have people dying our medical care system because they can't afford it.

The ghettos were tough; however, it was the CEOs that made the decision to take away the good paying jobs from those people who lived in the ghettos and send them overseas. The CEOs did not care about the ordinary folks and expect them to fend for themselves but the folks couldn't because of the systematic way they have been kept down by the wealthy folks and the business leaders..

What you are proposing is full blown unregulated capitalism and an oligarchy system like it was before the 1929 Great Depression. I got news for you, unregulated capitalism and oligarchy system has not worked in Africa, Central and South America and certainly has not work in the USA. More people have been died under the disguise of the free market, capitalist system due to poverty and social economic inequality than those killed by Communism. Peter Joseph in an interview with Abby Martin stated that according to one study about 18 million people die each other from poverty and social economic inequality, so he stated that in the last 6 years 108 million people have die because of these two things cause by unregulated capitalism and economic inequality. In addition, you had lots of other people who oppose US corporate interests in their countries killed because they wanted no more domination of their economy and their countries by American companies. You forget about all the Western countries including America killing people in large numbers in their request for land and raw materials all under the disguise of democracy, free markets and capitalism. Deaths cause by Capitalism has far exceed those killed by Communism and the way things are going, thanks to oil companies suppressing reports about global climate back in 1954 and in the 1970s, Capitalism will killed off the entire human population than Communism ever did by a wide, wide, wide margin.

I hate to break it to you, but I will. You can't make everyone equal by stealing land, resources, and money from the ordinary folks and giving it to the unproductive folks (wealthy people and corporations) while at the same time, the unproductive folks have free access to government services while the rest of society is not allow to have those government services. You still have half the world's population still struggling to live on $2 to $10 a day and 50% of Americans still live near the poverty level. has been tried multiple times, it doesn't work and the only great loss of life is incurred by the common folks. With few exceptions, the wealthy folks never pay for their lives.

Start a company and get rich?

That is the wrong line of thought. Ross Perot stated that the best way to get rich is to make good products and services. He said that too many companies failed because the people in those companies only thought of making money.

Start a company. Yeah, sure. It is alot easy for a wealthy person to start up a company in America than an ordinary citizen because that person has access to the political, social, and economic conditions to get the money and resources to start one. In Norway, you have more successful start up companies because you have the government helping people to start up companies and help them to succeed. Norway has a far lower rate of failed companies because of government help and the government regulates the companies plus they own shares in those companies so they have a say in how the companies are being run. You don't see the US Chamber of Commerce helping ordinary folks to start up companies nor are they doing anything about reducing the high failure rate of start up companies. Nowadays, the US Chamber of Commerce is dominated by the large corporations ahd have completely abandon the small and medium size businesses.

The way for a happy life is to have government regulated businesses and ensure that everyone has a decent standard of life so people can have fun enjoying life because they have the peace of mind that they are economically secure instead of having an insecure life due to domination of the economy by business leaders and wealthy people.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 20:27:30

You aren't proposing European socialism. Even there they are having problems because the citizens don't have enough money to maintain the status quo and provide "free stuff" to the economic migrants pouring into their countries. The Canadian health care system is so "good" that people are crossing the border into Detroit to get cancer treatment and other non-routine medical work done instead of dying on a government waiting list.

Unlike you, I was alive during the 60's and the ghettos were just as tough as they are now. The people with good paying jobs left the trash behind to clean itself up.

What you are proposing is full blown communism. Got news for you, it didn't work in Russia, China, Cambodia, or Vietnam in the 20th century. It is not working in Venezuela in the 21st century. More people have been killed trying to implement communism (See Kulak, Great Leap Forward, Khmer Rouge, Viet Cong, Chavistas) than every foreign war combined.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you don't make everybody equal by stealing from the productive and giving it to the non-productive. It's been tried multiple times with a great loss of life and it just doesn't work.

Go start a company and get rich. You'll be much happier helping other people and have a lot more fun along the way.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 12:57:23

Get the money from the wealthy and corporations since they have been getting it from us for the last 38 years. It is our money not theirs in the first place.

Once again why do you want to put the USA into the caplistist/oligiaciy hellhole of what it was before the Great Depression of 1929.

50 years ago, it was safe for Americans even in the ghetto areas not do deal with drug street gangs and drive by shootings because at least many of them had good paying jobs like in the auto industries

Why don't you move to Western and Northern Europe and then come back to me and tell me how bad their economic/medical system is? Or how bad the Canadian medical care system is.. Those areas have better land of equality when it comes to better political, social, and economic rights for the people in those countries than it is in the USA and they get their money worth in terms of free stuff because it is already pay for in terms of taxes instead of shelling for it out of their own pockets as individual compare to the ordinary American citizen.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 12:41:52

Once again, where is the money going to come from for this "basic income" and why do you want to take the United States in the same direction as that socialist hellhole of Venezuela?

20 yrs ago, Caracas was the Paris of Latin America. Now its "safe" areas are worse than the roughest ghettos in Lebanon.

Why don't you move there for a year or two and then tell me how great everything works in the land of "equality" and "free stuff"?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 12:34:19

Where did I say about rolling back pollutions and safety standards? It is the corporations and wealthy people who want to roll back those standards.

If you can't get everyone a good manufacturing job, then let's give everyone a basic minimum guarantee income so at least they can enjoy their retirement years. Let's also cut back on the salaries, perks stock options, and bonuses that these CEOs get since they no longer have to supervise the large number of workers that used to be required of them and actually cut out the number of managers needs to supervise the workers and/or cut out the CEOs and let the workers run the plants since the re

No tax revenues have gone down since the tax cuts went into effect. What spending increases are you referring to? The only spending that has occurred is the wealthy and CEOs is on themselves

Well giving tax breaks and subsidies to the wealthy people and CEOs of corporations hasn't help the American worker at all when you look at the huge unequal pay between the CEOs and the workers. Unions have not been able to help the workers because the corporations and wealthy people have been using their financial and political power to knock them down every chance they get, and they use the government to do it since the age of the Glided Era.

Let's also have the kind of job re-training that they have in Europe and unlimited unemployment benefits. If corporations don't like the concept of unlimited employment then they have an incentive to put the people back to work ASAP.

There is a thing as free medical care because you get it for free after paying taxes on it which means you don't have to shell out of pocket expenses. You need to cut out the HMOs and the insurance companies if you want to reduce medical spending. They do not rationed medical care in Europe nor in Canada. Ask any Canadian citizen or a person in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France and Finland.

What green space, smart density, and other regulations? It was the real estate people kept jacking up the prices and the governments at the city, county, and state level didn't do a thing to stop it. No right to live in NYC and Silicon Valley? You want to tell that to the working class people, the retired people and the long time ordinary folks who live in those areas until genefitidcation by the wealthy people drove them out of those areas. It was the wealthy people who stole those people's ability to live in those areas and many of those wealthy people and corporations got government money from those people, The wealthy people do not have the right to determine who lives and who doesn't live in those areas considering the fact that they made it impossible for ordinary folks to live in those areas. As Nick Hanauer pointed out in his Ted Talk speech, the rich people can't buy all the houses, rent all the apartments, etc, to keep the economy going even in the local areas

Sorry but the people can't leave the area if they don't have the money to do so and the companies are not inclined to leave the area even if they complain about the high cost of living (which they brought onto themselves), and they are certainly not going to raise the wages of their workers. They will just tried to import more workers. As a matter of fact, the CEOs in the Silicon Valley got sue because it was found out that they had made an unwritten verbal agreement not to poach each other's workforce. So how can a worker leave for greener pastures when he/she discovers that management at his/her company and at all the other companies don't want to him/her to have a greener pasture but it is okay if the mangers can leave the companies for greener pasture?

If Reagan and Bush had their way, they would have gotten rid of the Glass Steagall Act, and they still went on in deregulating the economy thus helping to create the meltdown in 2008. The same thing for the Republican Congress since they were brought and paid for by their wealthy and corporate sponsors.

If you want to talk about unproductive citizens, then you need to refer that to the CEOs and wealthy people because they have been stealing from the rest of society plus all the tax breaks and subsidies they have been getting for the last 38 years and have given nothing back but universal misery and pain by destroy the economy both at home and aboard? Companies like Walmart and Amazon hardly pays any taxes at all; yet, they get free access to government services like fire and police protection and various government assistance programs for their workers because they will not pay their workers an adequate wage which is why Bernie Sanders was trying to ge a bill pass for companies like Walmart to reimburse the government for all the government programs spend on the Walmart workers You have it totally wrong, It is Walmart, the rest of the corporations and the wealthy people who have been unproductive and been stealing the ordinary folks' money so they can have their own lavish lifestyle. You are the one who can't understand it.

It is you who wants to turn the USA into the vacation garden spot that it was before the Great Depression of 1929 where the wealthy and corporations rule America and the ordinary citizen has no say? I rather have the garden spot of Western and Northern Europe being implemented into the USA. What make you think that Central and South America (with the the exception of Costa Rico) are garden spots after decades of USA Capitalism/Oligarchy unregulated economic policies being imposed on them since the 19th and 20th centuries which has led to populist insurgencies by the common folks, massive illegal immigration, huge political, social, and economic inequality, and the rise of drug cartels?

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 12:24:41

Okayyy. So what you are saying is we should roll back every manufacturing efficiency made since 1960 to give everybody a good paying manufacturing job. While we're at it, we should also roll back pollution controls and safety standards.

Education costs track the ability to finance them. When I was in school, it was impossible for a school to charge $60k for tuition because no bank was willing to take on the risk. Why not tailor the amount of money you can borrow to the salary you can earn with the degree? I can almost hear the howls from every college that awards degrees in history, political science, education, and every other worthless piece of paper that ends in "Studies." I guarantee that administration levels would drop back to the numbers in the 1960's and tuition and books would be much more affordable.

Actually, tax collections have increased since the tax cuts went into effect. Spending has increased more. What spending do you want to see cut? You are being disingenuous if you aren't wiling to take a crack at spending cuts. There is no such thing as free medical care. Do you want to pay European level taxes to have your health care rationed? How much more affordable do you think housing would be without "green space," "smart density," and other regulations that have added $45-50 k to the price of a house since 1970? Nobody has a "right" to live in NYC or Silicon Valley. If enough people leave an area, either wages will increase or the company will relocate. Stealing from a guy who can afford to live somewhere to subsidize a person who can't afford to live there is idiotic.

As far as unions go, they do nothing for the average worker other than provide an excellent income to the officers (SEIU average wage, $20k/ yr. average officer $156-$256k, Unite Here average wage 17k/yr, Union officer $103-391k).

I believe that the Glass Stegall Act was eliminated by Bill Clinton as a payback to Louis Rich for his campaign support. Reagan and Bush had nothing to do with it

I can't understand how you can possibly believe that stealing from productive citizens to subsidize the less productive will result in anything other than universal misery.

Why would you ever want to turn the United States into the vacation garden spot that Venezuela has become?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 10:57:52

Those steel mills are not going to be employing the same number of people since many of them will be automated nor will they be unionized so I doubt the jobs will be increasing when it comes to employing more human beings . In addition, the USA does not have the kind of job re-training programs that Europe has for its people. Some of the Chinese industries are automating their jobs or sending their overseas so they don't have to paid wage increases to their workers. That is going to cause political, social, and economic problems for the government to deal with a potential 1.8 billion unemployed people.

If the US corporations had not send the jobs overseas in the first place plus lowering the tariffs for their own products, then they would not be complaining about the tariff increases and you would not be complaining about buy Chinese unemployment. They did not care about the American people in the first place. Some of the US companies like Harley Davidson have moved or stated that they are going to move out of the US because of the tariffs. They brought this mess onto themselves.

Things are not going great; otherwise, we would have had affordable education, good paying jobs, strong labor movements, free/affordable medical care and many people in their old age would be enjoying their retirement instead of working at WalMart a long time ago. Instead, the national debt is rising to 2 trillion dollars each year due to the tax cuts and you have conservative politicians and conservative economists attacking newly elected progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because people like her want to put back the rules and regulations that FDR had on corporations and wealthy people which gave the ordinary citizens the opportunity and a level playing field to have a decent life.

The corporations did cause the economic meltdown because they put Reagan and the two Bushes into office and along with the Republican Congress of 1994, they got rid of rules and regulations impose by FDR that regulated them. Real estate prices have not drop to a more reasonable levels where a ordinary citizen can afford to purchase a house or rent an apartment. Wages still have not risen enough in the last 38 years to compensate for wage stagenent during that time period in order to even put a down payment on the house let alone make the house payment or live in an apartment without it consuming nearly 30 percent of your income. If real estate prices were more reasonable, then even a low-income person or a middle, middle income person should be able to live in the Silicon Valley or New York City.

I can't understand how where you have been for the last 38 years because you continue to see the glass as perpetually always full and are still stuck in the 1950s & 60s.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 10:18:55

Really?

US Steel has announced that they are spending $1 billion to rebuild their mill in Gary, Indiana. Steel mills are being built and renovated in Youngstown, Cleveland, and Middletown, Ohio and Detroit, MI.

Give Trump a few more tariff increases. We buy China's unemployment with our I-phones. I'd rather give the money to the US government and have the Chinese feed their own unemployed. I'd be willing to bet that more manufacturing jobs will come back. Even before the tariffs, manufacturing jobs were INCREASING at the rate of 350,000 per year, the best since 1995. Think of what it will be with larger tariffs. Manufacturing at its peak (1960) only employed 32% of the workforce. It is 8.5% and GROWING today.

Corporations did not cause the 2008 meltdown. Lax real estate lending standards (the government telling the banks that everyone deserved a house whether they could pay for it or not) have not been reinstated. Fortunately, interest rates are being allowed to rise which hopefully will keep the lending stupidity at bay and will cause real estate prices to drop to a more reasonable level.

Things are going great. I can't understand how you can't see that unless you choose to see the glass as perpetually half empty.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 09:49:40

Where is your data? The manufacturing jobs (including Trump) have not come back even though Trump said that they would if he was elected. You still have a lot of rural and urban areas still suffering from the lack of good paying jobs and the wealthy people and corporations not investing in the communities and their companies despite the fact that they got huge tax breaks. The CEOs stated for the record that they will not use the money from the tax breaks to raise the salaries of their workers and invest in the companies.

How many of those Afro-American businesses are manufacturing ones like steel, copper, computer, auto, textiles, trains, etc? If they are service jobs, it doesn't mean much. Manufacturing jobs are the ones that create wealth for the country and makes this country a creditor one not a debitor one.

What is good during Obama? The Republican Party stated that they would not work with Obama and change the filibuster rules so anything that Obama send to them would be dead on arrival. The business leaders informed Obama that they would not bringing the manufacturing jobs back; yet, the economy prosper under Obama.

Just wait till your idea of what is the "bad" become a disaster because Trump and the Republican Party have taken off the safeguards on the corporations which led to the meltdown of 2008.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 09:19:51

Where's your data?

BTW, I live in the Detroit metro area and even inner city Detroit is looking up. Black people are working at jobs (sometimes the first jobs in several generations). Small businesses are being started at an incredible rate. For the first time in over 50 years there are construction cranes in town and new housing is being constructed.

Many of the cities that I travel to on business are doing just as well.

I guess you see what you want to see, but if this is your idea of how bad things are in America, I'll take this "bad" over what passed for "good" during the Bush and Obama administrations.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 09:01:39

Sorry, but most millionaires today for the last 38 years don't start with nothing and they come from the wealthy families. They also have political, social, and economic connections to enable to start their own business or they inherited their wealthy and/or companies from their parents.

If you stepped away from your keyboard and go out on the streets and see how bad it is in America, you would get a realistic view of what is happening in this country.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 08:53:01

Really?

If that is the case, how do explain how over 75% of the country's millionaires started with .... wait for it.....NOTHING.

If you stepped away from your keyboard and used the time more productively, you might be able to join them.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 08:40:40

Lot of us do work but the system has been rigged in favor of the wealthy and you should know this by now.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 08:15:16

And you would know this how? How many wealthy people do you know?

If you took the time to work toward success instead of wallow in hate and envy, you might have better results in life.

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 08:13:16

No it it wealthy that hate the rest of the population and each other. And they are too lazy to work at success with the way they are always asking for more tax breaks and subsidies and are too lazy to work at making good products and services

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-13 08:03:54

Hate and envy much? Or are you just too lazy to work toward success?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-13 04:14:49

your sted you're.

Posted by Terri-Rae Elmer on 2019-01-12 23:55:24

"Millionaire is not that big of a deal anymore."

Oh really? Many wealthy people are paranoid about losing their wealth and comparing themselves to other people so they seem to envy and/or are jealous of each other. Doesn't change the fact that they are determine to dictate about how rest of us are suppose to live while they continue to live high off the hog and you have nearly 50% of Americans living at or near the poverty. As Nick Hanauer point out in his talk on Ted Talk, the wealthy people can not sustain the economy by themselves and if they keep creating the political, social, and economic inequality that they have created, their heads are going to roll.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-12 22:17:34

Millionaire is not that big of a deal anymore. Over 10% of the households in the country are now millionaires. Envy much?

Posted by John Smith on 2019-01-12 19:37:29

How can you have life choice when you have a few hundred millionaire families and CEOs determining the life choices of others? If the TV and newspaper market were not deregulate, we would not be having the rest of the remaining media being dominated by the corporations and a few wealthy people.

Posted by DDRLSGC on 2019-01-12 16:54:21

Thank you John.

Posted by boldgandydancer on 2019-01-12 05:31:48

I think that you missed the point Mr. O'Reilly. This person teaches at a community college as an adjunct. That is a government job. I've heard the, "you just made bad choices argument" one too many times. The reality is that there simply are not enough good paying jobs out there, and we as a society allow predatory capitalism to suck the life out of workers when those companies pay poverty wages. The solutions that we as American citizens need to present include a living wage, affordable, socialized healthcare, and a solid retirement system for everyone who contributes to our society through the form of labor. Predatory capitalism allows the wealthy to reap enormous benefits by paying their workers a pittance. Public sector workers are under attack and even college professors are being replaced with low wage workers like adjuncts and TA's. The solutions that these workers need to take is organizing themselves into a union. Unfortunately, there is little unity between tenured teachers and adjunct. There is a sense of, "I've got mine and I'm not going to risk it for someone else to have a bigger piece of the pie." It's a sad state of affairs.

Posted by John Laesch on 2019-01-11 17:56:22

Sorry, but your plight is a direct outcome of your life choices. If you DON'T want to be an elementary or secondary school teacher then getting a BA in English is not a very marketable degree. Thirty years ago a BA in English along with a Masters in Writing Studies might have landed you a job in your preferred field, journalism. However, had you taken even a cursory look at what has happened to newspapers over the last few decades, you would have learned that there is no job market to speak of for journalists. The number of newspapers has drastically shrunk and the few surviving newspapers have cut staffing to the bone.

Given your current qualifications, you're best bet would be to seek a government job, where a general education and good writing skills can be assets, or to intern in a public relations company where your educational credentials would apply. Once you've accrued some work experience in that field and made some contacts, you could work yourself into a economically rewarding career.

Posted by Jack O'Reilly on 2019-01-10 13:20:14

capitalism = race to the bottom. the ones other than the 10%ers who sing its praises, are really only happy knowing that someone, somewhere else is worse off than they are.

Posted by ha on 2019-01-10 08:30:19

More the norm that what one would expect. One needs to develop more than one set of skills and also need to do real research when they are in high school. I know of a student at a major college who needed to secure employment in order to pay his school bills. He worked for a certified plumbing contractor who got him into a DOL certified training program to become a plumber. When he completed his college degree he also completed the DOL training program. He works as a plumber. There is a difference between what you read and being the grunt on the front line. My requirement for students was to actually visit a business doing what they want to do. Many times I would hear that it was not what they expected. How many counselors in high school even allow a student to explore the skilled . As far as career counseling on the college level the less said the better. Why is it that in the US a BS/BA degree will take 4 or 5 years while in Europe the same degree will only take 3 years. The big stress is on IT, with 10,000 workers with these skills being hired under green card or h-visa work programs. Our college grads compete with these h-visa/green cards workers for the same job openings.

Posted by 6384601 on 2019-01-09 19:17:41

Hmm

Posted by jesucristo666 on 2019-01-09 01:02:21

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